The present invention relates to a device to aid the positioning of a pilot in an aircraft, so that he may accurately view the outside environment and the on-board instruments. More particularly, the invention concerns a device that permits improving the precision of positioning the pilot in the cockpit, particularly his height position.
On board an aircraft, pilots must be precisely positioned in order to assure good visibility of the various instruments and to guarantee that the pilot has a view of the outer environment that conforms to regulatory requirements. Among other things, the quality of this positioning permits improving the pilot's performance, both at the level of time saved in adjusting the seat each time, as well as improving the level of comfort, thus decreasing eye and muscle fatigue due to slight but repetitive movements of the head. In order to regulate his position in the cockpit, the pilot generally uses a visual aid that permits him to create a theoretical point in space, called the theoretical pilot eye position, said theoretical point being situated roughly between both eyes. The visual aid consists of two spheres (3, 4) that are offset spatially by several millimeters of diameter, as illustrated in FIG. 1. The line passing through the centers of said spheres intersects a plane that is vertical to the aircraft reference coordinate system and this plane passes through the position of the pilot's axis relative to the position of the theoretical pilot eye position. Thus, when the pilot is positioned in the vertical plane corresponding to his longitudinal axis in the airplane (i.e., the plane of symmetry of his seat), he is correctly placed when the two spheres are aligned. In order to attain this theoretical eye position, the pilot moves his seat, most often by a front/back movement along an axis roughly parallel to the longitudinal axis of the aircraft reference system and by an up/down movement along an axis roughly parallel to the vertical axis of the aircraft reference system.
The disadvantage of a device for aiding the positioning of a pilot that has this visual aid is that said device is only precise when the spheres are very small in size, but the pilot views these spheres better when they are larger in size.
The implementation of a device for aiding pilot positioning that permits improving the precision of pilot positioning in an aircraft is therefore important, both in order to improve his comfort as well as to simplify the positioning operations.
The present invention proposes to improve how the pilot perceives the alignment of the visual aid without increasing the size of said visual aid and without loss of positioning precision.